The Top 20 Albums of 2016, according to me, who has impeccable taste but doesn’t really listen to pop or hip hop so take this list with a grain of salt I guess

Greetings, loyal readers! 2016 was a year that happened, and is in fact still happening. During said year, many musical artists released new albums, a significant portion of which I listened to in whole or in part at some point. Here is a list of the ones I liked the most.

In all seriousness, I probably listened to more new albums in 2016 than I did any other year previously. There were only a couple of records that really blew me away–fewer than last year, for instance–but a whole lot of consistently enjoyable ones. And no, neither of those classifications include the comically awful, inexplicably lauded Bon Iver record, which sounds like a dial-up modem getting a hand job from Kanye West, or the new Radiohead album, which put me to sleep, as most Radiohead albums tend to do. Nope, below is a list of 20 records from 2016 that I really dug, plus a few honorable mentions. You can read blurbs I wrote for a few of these albums on Slant Magazine’s list of the 25 Best Albums of 2016. You’ll also find full reviews of several of these over on Slant, as well as Spectrum Culture. Happy listening!